How We Handle Grief

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

This bothers ne too. I lost my son 3 years ago to cancer. There’s not an hour of every day that I don’t think of him. Most are good memories others are sad because I miss him so much. There are people in my life that never bring him up to me or ask me how I’m doing. I know they think if they bring up the subject I’ll feel bad or fall apart. But the thing is, I’m always thinking of him. Someone asking about him isn’t going to make me all of a sudden remember that he died. That’s always with me. I WANT people to talk about him and ask me about him or how I’m feeling. I love hearing his name and talking about him. It makes me happy to know that others haven’t forgotten him. That’s my biggest fear - that he’ll be forgotten.
To the OP - my heart goes out to you. My circumstances were very different from yours, but a loss of someone you loved so much hurts and will always hurt. There is nothing that will change that, not even time. That person will not and cannot be replaced. It doesn’t get better with time, you just learn to live with it. It’s a part of your life now.

I’ve had addicts in my life and know that unless they want to make changes and get help there’s nothing you can do. Even if they try, sometimes they just can’t do it. Which is hard for someone who isn’t an addict to understand. It’s very frustrating and sad. You loved her - that was what you did for and it was the best thing for her. Take care.

22

In Spanish we say “I share your feelings”; I didn’t understand it until I lost my Dad (so careless, really!). The word condolences itself means “shared pain”, but the feelings after a great loss are a lot more complicated than that. Like Beck said, how you feel at the time is however you are feeling, and it’s all valid and it’s all real.

Peace,
Nava

23

Someone upthread has correctly pointed out that anger is a reasonable, predictable, entirety human passage in grief.

I want to emphasize that the anger comes from the loss itself. I can tell you from personal experience that I spent a long time trying to find the rational cause for anger in the events leading up to my loss, but in the end the things I was looking for – something or someone to blame my anger on – didn’t exist, or at the least didn’t merit anger. I was mad at reality, and time had to pass before I could realize that.

You have my condolences.

24

When my first husband died, I felt profound guilt that I wasn’t able to fix him, to save him from his choices and behaviors, to find some little or big thing to say or do or encourage. Something like in a book or a movie, something inspiring and life-changing.

We want to bend the world to our wills, and I think a lot of us have the notion that if we were really great people, we could do that. That if the world and other people aren’t changing for us, it’s our fault. I’m not talking about our conscious minds. Our rational brains know it isn’t true. But for many of us, we still have that thought back there, hidden and maybe even embarrassing, that if we try hard enough, we can fix everything. And we want to think we’re in control, because that means we can stop it happening again.

I think one of the things the grieving process reveals most completely is that we can’t even control our own brains. I spent many hours trying to impose order on my thinking, hoping that would make the pain fade, hoping that seeing my guilt as the assumption of impossible responsibility it was would make it go away. That didn’t happen. Instead there was a whirling, erratic cycle of guilt, sadness, love, rage, fear, numbness, relief, hope, confusion, despair, loneliness, joy, and hatred. And despite my eventual acceptance and the wonder and beauty of my new life without him, I still can feel every single one of those emotions again on occasion. Every single one. It’s been over 9 years, so I don’t expect that to change, though the mix is now mostly love and joy with a dash of fear and guilt.

I echo the encouragement to find people to talk to. Talk about how you feel, even when you think it makes you or your SO look bad. I think a guilt exposed is often a guilt lessened. Just talk. Some of the things you say and things you predict won’t end up being true, and that’s okay. And some days, someone might ask you how you feel and you won’t know, or you’ll say you are fine when you are not, or you’ll say you are sad when you’re angry, or any combination of inaccuracies and wishful thinking. And that’s okay too.

I’m so sorry.

25

This.